unnoticed by ordinary observers in the prosperous days of the capital--
became conspicuously prominent. The higher classes, including the
remnant of the old noblesse, had, during the whole siege, exhibited
qualities in notable contrast to those assigned them by the enemies of
aristocracy. Their sons had been foremost among those soldiers who never
calumniated a leader, never fled before a foe; their women had been among
the most zealous and the most tender nurses of the ambulances they had
founded and served; their houses had been freely opened, whether to the
families exiled from the suburbs, or in supplement to the hospitals. The
amount of relief they afforded unostentatiously, out of means that shared
the general failure of accustomed resource, when the famine commenced,
would be scarcely credible if stated. Admirable, too, were the fortitude
and resignation of the genuine Parisian bourgeoisie,--the thrifty
tradesfolk and small rentiers,--that class in which, to judge of its
timidity when opposed to a mob, courage is not the most conspicuous
virtue. Courage became so now--courage to bear hourly increasing
privation, and to suppress every murmur of suffering that would discredit
their patriotism, and invoke "peace at any price." It was on this class
that the calamities of the siege now pressed the most heavily. The
stagnation of trade, and the stoppage of the rents, in which they had
invested their savings, reduced many of them to actual want. Those only
of their number who obtained the pay of one-and-a-half franc a day as
National Guards, could be sure to escape from starvation. But this pay
had already begun to demoralise the receivers. Scanty for supply of
food, it was ample for supply of drink. And drunkenness, hitherto rare
in that rank of the Parisians, became a prevalent vice, aggravated in the
case of a National Guard, when it wholly unfitted him for the duties he
undertook, especially such National Guards as were raised from the most
turbulent democracy of the working class.